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In photography, ISO generally refers to a measure of "Film Speed", which I use including reference to digital sensor sensitivity.
In short, the actual letters ISO are a name for the International Organization for Standardization (not, officially, an acronym -- more information here), and in photography it refers to the ISO 12232:2006 standard and other ...

Is lower ISO always better?
No!
For a fixed amount of light coming into the camera, lowering the ISO will not result in a reduction of noise (improved signal-to-noise ratio). The only way to reduce noise is to combine lowering the ISO with letting in more light by opening the aperture or leaving the shutter open longer.
If the amount of light you can ...

I think medium and large format photography is still a world dominated by film. While that fact is starting to change with more recent digital cameras that have extremely high megapixel counts (20mp or more), going to a larger format is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper with film. The benefits of large format are particularly nice for landscape photography, but shine ...

Star trails (Google images search) are much easier to photograph using film equipment, for a few reasons:
It won't kill your battery. A digital SLR will expose for an hour if you're lucky before the battery dies, depending on your power setup (extra grip vs no). A film camera can expose indefinitely without using any additional battery usage, which is ...

It would be wrong to think that increasing ISO results in no "physical" change in the camera at all. The problem with ISO is that people often call it sensitivity. That is really a misnomer...sensitivity is a fixed attribute of any given sensor, and it cannot be changed.
Sensitivity is really more synonymous with the quantum efficiency of the photodiodes, ...

The reason you can see such a large dynamic range isn't that the eye, as an optical device, can actually capture such a range - the reason is that your brain can combine information from lots and lots of "exposures" from the eyes and create an HDR panorama of the scene in front of you.
The eye is pretty poor from an image quality standpoint but it has a ...

I think Film vs Digital article by Roger N. Clark answers exactly this question. Let me quote the chart from its summary:
The main point is that digital sensors have fixed resolutions and variable sensitivity, while films have fixed sensitivity and varied resolution. Overall, at high ISO (> 400) most of the modern sensors provide higher resolution, and to ...

Digitally blown highlight is worse than negative film because transition between blown and light areas is quite harsh. Slide film is only slightly better than digital in rendering details in overblown highlights. You don't even need high magnification to see the digital image blowing promptly plain white, while the negative film gives more gradual fading of ...

Regarding the statement:
Is lower ISO always better?
There seem to be a variety of opinions on this topic, and while they may seem mutually exclusive, I am not certain that is the case. There is no cut and dry "Yes, X ISO setting is always better." I think which is better is very dependent on context...on what it is you are trying to shoot, and what ...

First of all, it was an issue on film. If Bryan Peterson wasn't aware of it at the time, it just shows what he didn't know, not that it actually wasn't a problem.
There were differences though. First of all, we didn't have EXIF data, and most people didn't keep careful enough notes to really know why shot X came out quite a bit sharper than shot Y. Even for ...

The white balance should be indicated on the box and the datasheet for the film. There aren't too many choices though.
Most films are daylight balanced for shooting in direct sunlight (approx. 5000K). If you were shooting in open shade (approx. 6000K), you were expected to use a slight warming filter to get rid of the blue cast. If you shot ...

First an explanation; this answer extensively borrows from and combines points from a number of the existing answers to this question. To those from whom I have borrowed, thanks.
A short answer to this question is "very little" but that hardly does justice to the intent of the question. So I'll make a long answer and divide it into sections.
Spectral ...

I'll put it this way: I've often regretted not bracketing, but rarely regretted bracketing.
Meters still make errors, and data which exceeds the dynamic range of the sensor is gone forever, regardless of post-processing software. I recommend bracketing any images which have complex lighting or any particularly important images, certainly until you ...

I don't think we can talk about quality difference anymore. The definite difference, in my opinion, is the need of power of digital cameras. If you are going mountain climbing then a film camera might be more appropriate since mountains still lack power plugs.
Also, film cameras have a very low starting price. If you are a novice it is economically ...

The size of the grains in the film varies depending on the film sensetivity. The more sensetive the film, the larger the grains. Digital noise is always the size of a pixel, regardless of the ISO setting.
Film grain is color neutral, as it consist mostly of luminance differences. Digital noise consists of both luminance and color differences, and is most ...

One thing that I like better about film photography is, that you can shoot slides and project these in large scale with their original resolution onto a screen, or even just a smooth white wall.
Digital projectors will never give your 12 megapixel camera justice--most digital projectors cannot display anything beyond the "HD" format, which is really only 2 ...

Film has always had a more nonlinear response than digital, due to the different processes of exciting chemicals to change states, and collecting electrical charge on a solid state device. Another reason is that film contains grains of different sizes which respond differently to light, whereas most digital sensors are homogeneous.
What you ideally want is ...

This has certainly been done with medium format SLRs that have interchangeable backs (e.g., Leaf and Phase One backs).
For a 35mm camera, the situation isn't nearly so positive. There was once a company that claimed to be working on a digital sensor that would be shaped like a 35mm film cannister with the sensor sticking out roughly like the film tongue. ...

I think it's still generally true that one tends to either use lowest-possible ISO in bright lighting, or else higher-than-200 ISO settings in darker situations. But I wouldn't say I'd avoid ISO 200; it just often doesn't seem to be convenient. If I'm in the sun, there's usually no need for it, and if I'm indoors, I'd often rather get a little more depth of ...

ISO is effectively a sensitivity of the sensor, whether it be film or digital. In theory, ISO for a digital camera should be the same as for a film camera.
The ISO on film is determined by the grain size of the chemical. What this will mean is that the resolution will be better with a lower ISO film. Also, because a film grain is all or nothing, this will ...

Yes, but not on most standard DSLRs. Most digital cameras have an infrared filter on the sensor to improve the image captures in the visible spectrum.
In order to do take infrared photos it is best to buy a camera designed for that purpose or modify a camera by removing the filter on the sensor.
There is a great overview of digital infrared photography ...

You asked two slightly different questions.
Is it true that analog SLR’s are obsolete unless you develop your own photos?
No, that is not true. Film may have been supplanted by digital, but it is in no way obsolete.
Is it true that because of current printing methods for 35mm, shooting in this format will be necessarily of lower quality than my ...

Firstly I can't think of any reason a longer (sunlight) exposure would affect saturation nor have I heard of this idea before.
There's a couple of things that might be causing confusion here:
Longer exposures can cause individual pixels to be saturated, in the sense that they can't store any additional charge. This is a totally different use of the word ...

It certainly is not worth investing in a 35mm film camera for the perceived higher resolution, additional color, or sharpness.
To get results you will likely have to either invest in, or at least have access to a drum scanner that gives you the highest resolution possible right now. Otherwise you will likely be scanning on a flatbed that almost certainly ...

There were several techniques:
Carry extra film backs (MF) or camera bodies (35mm) with different film loaded
Push process lower ISO film to sacrifice fine grain in favor of perceived higher ISO
Rewind the film already in the camera until just the leader is outside the canister, noting what frame you are on, then load a different roll. You can then reload ...